The Phoenix

Wearing civilian clothes again felt simultaneously liberating and strange. Peter had kindly provided a few simple items from Marks & Spencer for her to wear around the estate at Windlesham, including a pair of wellington boots and a hooded parka raincoat, despite it being late August.

‘Mrs Pridden can return anything that doesn’t fit or that you don’t like,’ he’d assured her, in a typically thoughtful handwritten note. ‘It’s not high fashion, I’m afraid, but I guessed you’d prefer comfort, at least while you’re here.’

Dear Peter. He hadn’t changed. Time might have withered his once smooth, handsome face, but it had had no impact on his kindness, loyalty or discretion. He’d respected Athena’s wishes for them not to meet in person, never even asking her where she’d been since the helicopter crash, or why she’d suddenly decided to rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of her assumed death. He knew, instinctively, that she would talk when – if – she was ready. He had even gone so far as to remove all photographs of himself, and her, from the manor – his own home.

‘The pictures remind me too much of him,’ Athena explained when they spoke on the telephone, her voice as laden with pain as it had been all those years ago. ‘Being in England will be hard enough. I hope you understand?’

‘Of course,’ said Peter. ‘Stay as long as you need or want. No one will disturb you there.’

Stepping back into the kitchen, a wonderfully warm, English room with a bright red Aga, flagstone floors, and prints of Irish wolfhounds all over the walls, Athena made herself a mug of coffee, and flipped open her laptop computer. She’d had numerous offers of ‘bolt-holes’, places she could stay and regroup once she’d decided to leave the convent. Konstantinos Papadakis, an old friend who had been Spyros’s best man, had prepared his ultra-private villa in Corsica to be at her disposal. Darling Konsta. She’d seriously considered it, but ultimately she’d decided she needed to be further away from Greece and the forces ranged against her. Besides which, all of Spyros’s old friends would be under suspicion, once people realized she was not only alive, but once again at large.

Peter was part of another life. Before Spyros. Before all of the madness. Before Apollo, even – although that Peter and that Athena were long gone now. For better or worse. No one will look for me here, Athena thought. More importantly, Peter Hambrecht was one of the very few men on earth that she knew, with certainty, she could trust. Unlike her so-called ‘loyal’ number two and Spyros’s surrogate son, that turncoat snake-in-the-grass Makis.

He wants me dead, thought Athena. She’d suspected it before, but events on the morning she fled Sikinos had hardened her suspicion into bitter certainty. There was no way that the surprise visitor had found his way to the convent by accident. Someone from inside the Petridis organization must have leaked her whereabouts, no doubt hoping that the damaged soul would find her and do their dirty work for them. As for the ‘village girl’ who’d burst in on the two of them, the way she’d looked at ‘Sister Elena’ – that was more than just shock at her disfigurement. She’d been looking for something, searching Athena’s ruined face for clues. The girl’s own face had been unusual too, in a different way: searching, intelligent, but also hauntingly familiar. Athena still couldn’t place what it was she remembered. But there’d been more to that young lady than met the eye.

Athena could no longer doubt that someone close to her had deliberately betrayed her. With only a handful of people aware of her existence, let alone her identity as Sister Elena, Makis Alexiadis was the obvious culprit.

On her computer, Instagram and Facebook images displayed Mak-the-businessman, his legitimate alter ego, living the high life on his yacht.

Fiddling while our business burns, she thought bitterly. Swanning around the Med while everything Spyros built, everything we gave you, crumbles to dust.

If they didn’t act soon, their rivals would establish a stranglehold grip on the Aegean migrant route, and a pipeline worth hundreds of millions of dollars would be lost. She would contact Makis today about this. Let him know, by default, that she’d escaped whatever grisly fate he’d had in store for her at the convent, and begun to reassert her authority.

Her hands twitched with frustration. After so long out of the game, so long in hiding and isolation, she yearned for action. A part of her longed simply to get rid of Makis. She fantasized about a world where he was dead, and she, Athena, could seamlessly take over the reins of the Petridis empire, resuming her role as head of the organization and Spyros’s rightful heir. But that was a fantasy. Athena had her loyal supporters, to be sure. But the reality was, after twelve years in day-to-day command, Makis had henchmen of his own. Not everyone would welcome the return of Spyros’s wife from the grave.

For the time being, Athena must keep her friends close and her enemies closer. She must approach Makis Alexiadis with both skill and caution, like a male spider perfecting its mating dance, hoping to get close enough to mount the female, but without the risk of being eaten afterwards.

One step at a time.

Closing her computer, she took out a pen and paper and began to write.

She’s got a nerve. My God, she’s got a bloody nerve.

Like a petulant child, Mak tore Athena’s note into tiny pieces and scattered them over the side of the yacht.

Who the hell did she think she was, chastising him like a schoolboy for ‘allowing’ the migrant business to slip through his fingers? As if he controlled the tides and storms! As if he weren’t already actively sabotaging his rivals’ boats, bribing their skippers, and generally doing everything in his power to turn things around.

And meanwhile she, Athena, had inexplicably chosen this crucial moment to upset the apple cart. What did she think she was doing, having the Arab children’s feet branded like that? Had she hoped that one of them would drown? That by hijacking this very public human tragedy, her coded message would make its way into the media in a suitably macabre fashion, announcing both her glorious return to the Petridis organization, and her willingness to maim and kill to secure her place at the top table?

If so, then her plan had been a resounding success. But at what cost? Thanks to Athena’s flare for the dramatic gesture, Makis now had half the world’s intelligence agencies sniffing around him, not to mention Interpol, making it exponentially harder to ‘lock up’ the migrant route, as she claimed to want him to. And she had the nerve to lecture him about neglecting ‘our’ business?

Mak had never warmed to Athena, even back when Spyros was alive. He was used to the old man patronizing him, and he accepted it, but his much younger wife’s disdain was a different matter. Like every other red-blooded male, Mak had wanted Athena back then. He would have walked over hot coals to take her to bed, as he knew many other men did besides her husband. But the bitch had looked through him as if he didn’t exist. Athena was only interested in powerful men.

Spyros seemed to tolerate his wife’s infidelities with a sort of resigned regret, liberally mingled with adoration. As if Athena were a superior being, a superannuated sexual goddess who could no more be expected to remain faithful to one man than to go without food or water. For such a macho, controlling Greek, it was a strange attitude. But then all men changed the rules for Athena.

Not any more, Makis thought, with a warm, cruel glow of satisfaction. He hadn’t seen her in person since the accident. Nobody had, except the nuns and priests who – as was proved on Sikinos – had obviously saved and protected her. (The Petridis family had done a lot for the Catholic Church over the years; enough to ensure that they repaid their debts.) But Mak knew that she was hideous now, her once legendary beauty utterly destroyed by the flames that had consumed Spyros, burning him alive. With the resources at her disposal, Athena could easily have undergone reconstructive surgery if she’d chosen to. But instead she had opted to keep her ravaged face, wearing it as a mask, perhaps, something to hide behind? Or as a penance for her many sins?

She wasn’t stupid enough to agree to a face-to-face meeting with Makis now, and had deftly avoided all his requests for information on her whereabouts. ‘It’s safer for us all to keep our distance.’ Safer for you, you mean. But eventually the time would come. She’d slipped through his fingers at Sikinos, which was irritating, and the person responsible would pay for that. But in the end she would make a misstep. And when she did, Mak would be waiting.

One of the yacht stewards approached him.

‘Your drink is waiting for you in the study, sir. Would you prefer me to bring it out to you here?’

‘No, John, thank you,’ said Mak. ‘I’m coming inside.’

Pushing thoughts of Athena out of his mind for now, Mak made his way to his study, a small but perfectly formed wood-paneled room crammed with prints of the great Greek shipping era and models of Aristotle Onassis’s most famous yachts. Taking a sip of his perfectly prepared old-fashioned, he turned on his private cell and began skimming through pictures of Persephone Hamlin from earlier in the summer.

Instantly, he felt his mood lifting. What Athena had done to Spyros Petridis, himself a committed playboy when they met, Persephone had done to Makis. They hadn’t even slept together yet. Had only once kissed! And yet the feelings he had for her, his need, his longing … He